The Practice of Theory

The Practice of Theory

N. Pepperell:

Marx’s position is that humans, in a sense, aren’t that clever - we aren’t that original or creative in our thoughts - our thoughts are already “material” - our categories are things we do…

His strategy undermines academic pretension - but it also undermines romantic notions that there is some special sort of institutional setting where “real thought” can happen because that setting is somehow less divorced from “real life”: humans, for Marx, generate new possibilities collectively, initially in mundane actions - and largely, in the first instance at least, unintentionally. Explicit theory and conscious political practice then fumbles along behind, trying to work out and realise the potentials opened up by our collective accidents. Where this happens, what sorts of practices and institutional settings are associated with doing it in a way that is potentially transformative - all of this strikes me as a case-by-case thing…